Seeing is believing

Placing student teachers in successful, high-poverty schools can teach them that with high expectations and effective instructional practice all children can achieve at high levels.

These placements cannot be happenstance. Institutions of higher education (IHE) providing teacher training must specifically identify and work with such schools.

Using a reasonable definition of such schools, at least 40% free-reduced lunch rate and above average for the district achievement, we developed a methodology to illustrate this commitment by computing the proportion of student teaching partner schools that are high-performing, high-poverty, across geographically similar groups of IHEs.

We group institutions together that place student teachers in the same districts nearby to them, which means they face broadly similar placement opportunities. There is no absolute standard for such placements -- we provide comparative data only.

But, in the three regions we have mapped so far (Los Angeles, New York City, and Boston), there is as much as a 30 point difference in the proportion of such high-performing, high-poverty schools used for student teaching placements. (Click on the highlighted states to see the detail.)